Stay Ahead of Changing Food and Beverage Tastes

Using data analysis to detect consumer taste trends

Tastes change. Fads come and go. Food and beverage companies have to stay on top of consumer preferences or risk losing market share. In this environment, Big Data analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly being used to spot new taste trends.

Technology companies, seeing a market that is ripe for the picking, are responding to the needs of the industry by creating innovative predictive tools. For example, according to VentureBeat, Tastewise, a Tel Aviv-based startup, is developing a platform that leverages AI and predictive analytics to generate insights for restaurants, hospitality groups, and brands:

By scanning billions of data points for each food-related query a customer enters, Tastewise looks over chatter on social media and a month’s worth of food photos (around a billion photos total), in addition to 13 million items across 153,000 menus from top restaurants and about a million home recipes. With that data in hand — plus proprietary machine learning algorithms trained to identify plating and presentation trends and recognize the sentiment around dishes and ingredients … the service can suss out not only current culinary trends, but dishes poised to become popular in the future.

Flavor of the Month … or Day

Long-time brands like Coca-Cola are developing their own innovations in predictive technology. The soft drink giant capitalizes on its extensive network of vending machines to collect the data needed to analyze consumer preferences related to its 500 brands worldwide, according to Artificial Intelligence News:

Coca-Cola serves a large number of its drinks every day through vending machines. On newer machines, typically the customer will interact through a touch-screen display, enabling them to select the product they want and even customize it with “shots” of different flavors. The company has begun fitting these machines with AI algorithms allowing them to promote drinks and flavors that are most likely to be well received in the specific locations where they are installed.

Technical Expertise

Predictive technologies can help food and beverage brands stay relevant. LMS can help design and implement the digital infrastructure needed to use data analysis and AI to spot the next big food trend. Contact us at 800.257.5902 or email us today at [email protected].